Attack of the Killer Fallopian Tube

This week, I am recovering from spur-of-the-moment major surgery. (Note: This is a blow-by-blow account! Not very interesting to anyone but me! That said, take comfort in the fact that I have decided not to share the ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPHIC (emphasis on graphic) evidence of the situation!)

The fun started Sunday, when I developed really bad pain in the lower abdomen and lower back. After several hours, I told Dave I needed to see a doctor and asked him to take me to an urgent care clinic. Lacking the ability to really do diagnostic testing, the doc there said I "should" go to the E.R., but that I "could" take pain meds and follow up with my family doc the next day. After all, "maybe" it was just gas pain!

Fearing a night of unbearable pain, we went on over to the E.R. I laid on the floor until I was seen. I got an IV, and some pain med, and that helped. When that first pain med wore off, they gave me two full doses of morphine and two full doses of something much stronger, before the pain started to subside. (The nurse said it was enough drugs to knock a horse down. I'm not sure exactly what she meant.....?)

Ultrasound showed that I had a couple of big ovarian cysts...not too terribly uncommon, right? But the weight of the cysts caused my fallopian tube to wrap and wrap and wrap around the ovary, cutting off the blood supply and killing it. Exciting! Painful! Dramatic!

The on-call surgery people came in and operated around 12:30am Monday morning.

Dave, aka Mr. Compassion, had been seen doing a moderate amount of eye-rolling when I tried to describe the extent of my pain.

However, he developed some compassion when the surgeon described the pain like this:

The nerves affected are the same nerves that end in a man's, um, groinal nether-regions (complex medical term mine). A man's version of my situation would be like attaching a steel clamp to afore-mentioned groinal nether-regions. And twisting. And twisting. For hours. Without stopping.

'Nuff said. Dave got really nice.

I came home late Monday night. Grammy screeched into town to save us all early Tuesday morning. It's not fun to have surgery, but recovery totally trumps the pain before the surgery!